by Lena Nguyen
Park tried to stop herself from making an unkind comment. Even if the incident yesterday had never occurred, it was impossible to imagine the taciturn security officer ever getting friendly with her. She was equally, if not more, close-mouthed. “I don’t understand his role here,” she admitted. “Even after all this time. What authority does he have over me—or I over him? And why are he and Boone both here? Who defers to whom?” She shook her head, thinking of the way the two men avoided each other at all costs. “Even they don’t seem quite sure.”
“They belong to different branches of the ISF, so their ranks come out to about equal,” Keller replied. “Though we do know Sagara is far better trained than Boone: only the elite get let into the Security sector, while any man or woman stuffed to the gills with augments can be Military, like Boone. In fact, I hear that’s where most of the conscripts get sent. But you’ve got to have brains, brawn, talent, and a special kind of deadliness to make Sec Corps. They’re the ones who actually keep everyone safe.”
I don’t feel safe around him, Park thought, but she said instead: “It seems you admire him. And he’s cooperated with you so far. Why don’t you continue handling his patient sessions, then? I could do the rest.”
Keller raised her eyebrows at her. “Any reason why you’re so keen to avoid him?”
Desperately Park tried not to think about Sagara walking in on her kiss with Fulbreech. “No.”
Keller snorted. “Well, regardless, it’s not possible,” she said, running a hand over her stubbled head. For the first time Park noticed she had dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept. “I’ll have my hands full with this project; you’ll have to handle Sagara. And everyone else. And that’s that.”
You won’t have any time at all? Park wanted to ask; but she knew that would come off as entitled, needy. She said instead, trying not to sound desperate: “Will you be reachable, at least, if I have questions? Or if I need help?”
Keller didn’t give Park her usual smile: her look was already preoccupied and distant, as if she was only sitting through a formality—the outcome of which would not affect her. “No,” she said absently. “I’ll be going dark, so to speak.” Then she rose and held out her hand for Park to shake: a rare gesture, not commonly seen anymore. Contact between equals—or team players passing a torch. Park felt as if it had a finality to it; as if they were parting ways forever. She looked at Keller’s tough, leathery hand and said, “Going dark? But you’ll still be on the ship, won’t you?”
“I have faith in you, Park,” was all Keller said in reply. Then she withdrew her hand.
* * *
—
Park took the few minutes she had alone before Sagara’s appointment to try and calm her fast-whirling thoughts. There was too much to take in: her sudden change in status, Keller’s mystery project, Wan Xu’s evasiveness. Fulbreech’s kiss. Shit, how was she going to face Sagara after something like that? Did she bring it up to him if he didn’t mention it—preempt him with some sort of plausible justification? Or did they both simply pretend it had never happened?
Shit, shit, shit.
She spent a lot of time considering exactly how to address him, too. Up until now they had mostly avoided speaking directly to each other, so it had never been something she considered deeply. Everyone except the androids addressed each other by their surnames, without the usual labels and honorifics; ISF seemed to think that divisive titles and ranks were not necessary for the Deucalion’s academic tribe.
And yet, somehow, everyone still called him Captain Sagara.
I won’t, Park resolved to herself. It gave him too much automatic power over her—and he already had some significant leverage. She busied herself with inspecting the MAD, trying to avoid thoughts of using it on herself. Was Sagara even the type to need it? He had never asked for it in his sessions before, and there was so little in his file to go on. She knew the number of siblings Fulbreech had, the drugs Hunter had once been expelled from school for. But Sagara’s file was as minimal as bleached animal bone, picked clean by scavengers. She had nothing on him.
That gave him an advantage, too.
She tried studying his staff photo for clues. Although Sagara was not a bulky man, only tall and lean and ropy with hard muscle, he was still an intimidating presence—he always made Park feel like the room was close and airless. His eyes and hair were as black as pitch, his face cold and fine-boned and faintly dire, as if he were always on the verge of delivering terrible news. Even when he was being polite, he constantly seemed . . . prepared for something, on guard, as if he expected an attack from any quarter. That kind of keen hyper-awareness unnerved people—Park included.
The other reason she hated talking to him was that, of all the people on the Deucalion, Vincent Sagara was the hardest for her to read. He was always so cool-eyed and steady, impossibly unflappable, and she—used to having at least some knowledge of what someone thought of her—could never really tell what he was feeling. She hated that; felt that it put her on lower and unstable ground.
She still couldn’t read him when he came into the office, lithe and silent as a panther. Sagara didn’t look surprised at all to find Park sitting alone, either; she wondered if he already knew that Keller had abdicated her position. Or what “special project” she was working on. His file didn’t say if he was conscripted or not.
“Sagara,” Park said as he took the seat across from her. She was careful to keep her voice neutral.
“Park,” he said in turn, heavy-lidded. Then he said, without preamble: “Your robot’s becoming a nuisance to everyone.”
Park tried not to bristle. Although Sagara said it matter-of-factly, it seemed clear he was starting right away with a jab to assess her reaction. “To whom are you referring?” she asked him, outwardly calm.
Sagara shrugged lightly. “The custodian android,” he said. His voice was low and clipped; it was hard to say if he was Earth-born or not. “I’m not aware of its name. It wanders all over the ship, asking people questions. I’ve been told that you were the one who taught it to do that.”
“I didn’t teach him to do anything.” Park kept her voice level, but she could feel the blood thumping in her fingertips. “Jimex started asking me questions on his own. Most androids will do that, even the primitive ones, after they’ve been active long enough. It’s part of their heuristic learning modules: they naturally absorb things, adapt to their environment. That means asking questions, too.” She folded her hands together, only to realize they were damp. “I simply took the time to answer Jimex’s questions, or correct behaviors that were improper. That’s all.”
Sagara’s dark eyes quirked. “You should teach it to stop bothering others, then,” he said. “It’s like a child, jabbering away. I heard Boone threaten to recycle it.” He held her gaze for a moment, the faint amusement vanishing. “Some others think you might be using the bot to spy on people. Telling it to ask everyone questions, so that it can report the answers back to you.”
Park’s heart tensed a little, despite herself. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, through stiff lips. Better to not acknowledge the accusation at all, to show the absurdity of it.
Sagara regarded her for another moment, as if assessing whether or not his words had had an effect; she had the distinct feeling of a hawk appraising a smaller bird. Then he withdrew something from his pocket and said, “You should teach the thing, too, to be more careful with your own secrets. I overheard it asking Ellenex to give it medicine on the sly—without telling Chanur.”
He handed whatever he was holding to Park. She looked, incredulous, at the little green box in her hand. Anti-emesis tabs, the label told her. To counteract the effects of space-sickness.
Ellenex will prepare medication, Jimex had said. She will be discreet.
Fulbreech just kissed me.
Oh. I do not think Ellenex has medication for tha
t.
Park looked up at Sagara and said, very calmly, “I think you’re mistaken. These aren’t for me.”
For a moment it seemed that he was going to laugh. Then he smoothed away the thin smile and said courteously, “Of course not. My mistake.” He steepled his fingers and continued, “But my point still stands. You should educate the bot to be a little wiser in its dealings on the ship.”
“I’ll do my best,” Park said, chilly now with anger and embarrassment. “Although it would make more sense to refer the matter to Reimi. She’s the one who handles issues concerning androids on the ship, not me.”
Then, realizing her lapse, she kicked herself—but Sagara merely looked serious as he said, “It is unfortunate that she’s fallen sick.”
“How do you feel about that turn of events?”
His face remained impassive. “As long as her illness doesn’t threaten the rest of the ship, I suppose I don’t feel any particular way about it. How do you feel about it?”
“What would you do if her illness did threaten the rest of the ship?”
“I’d enact quarantine protocols. Try to eliminate the source of infection, if I could.”
“Eliminate?”
“Freeze. Chanur did the right thing.”
“The cautious thing.”
“Which, to a security officer, is always the right thing.”
They paused for a moment, looking at each other. Park didn’t know why she felt compelled to engage in this kind of verbal sparring, but she told herself that Sagara had started it. She couldn’t believe his paranoia, the implication that she could be employing Jimex to some sinister purpose. Or was he going out of his way to warn her, inform her about the others’ perceptions of her behavior? Both routes were confusing. And she still wasn’t getting much of a topographical read from him, at least emotionally, but she did have the acute sense that he was sussing her out. Why? Because of what happened in the escape shuttle?
“So are you a combat specialist, like Boone and Hunter?” she asked, to deflect her own thoughts. To keep Sagara from reading them.
“If you’re asking if I know how to fight, the answer is yes,” he answered, almost lazily. “I’ve seen combat. I fought carbon pirates back on Earth. I was sent in during the Outer System Wars.”
Mentally Park reviewed his file again; it hadn’t said anything about that. The Outer System Wars had spanned the entire outer ring of colonies past the Solar System: Luxue, Vier, Halla, Elysium, Corvus, and even the prison planet Pandora had all been enmeshed in a bloody, year-long conflict between the ISF and the rogue colonists who had wanted to secede from it. Although it was brief, the war had cost a million lives and destroyed the moon of Vela. Sagara had fought in that? He had to be conscripted. And he’d probably been awarded medals, high honors. No wonder they’d put him in charge of the security on Corvus. No wonder they trusted him to maintain order on the Deucalion.
And if he’d dealt with carbon pirates in the past, or killed terrorists in the outer system—how harsh would his treatment be of delinquents like Park and Fulbreech?
The blood drained from her face. Sagara, seemingly reading her thoughts, said, “Does that make you nervous?”
Park shook her head; she tried not to let her voice sound faint. “Not at all. I’m just—trying to understand your mindset. Whether your past experiences color your . . . treatment of others.”
“You talk as if we’re on opposing sides,” Sagara drawled. “We’re not enemies. I am not a soldier, Park.”
“What are you, then?” Now her voice did sound faint.
He gazed at her unblinkingly. “I’m an officer of the ISF’s Security Corps.”
“The difference being?”
The corner of his mouth twitched; Park read it as part irritation, part amusement. “The primary mission of soldiers like Boone is to eliminate the enemy,” Sagara said. “My primary mission is to protect what the ISF wants safe.”
“Meaning us,” Park prompted.
But Sagara said nothing in response to that.
* * *
—
At lunch, Park went to the usual dispensary line, feeling the absence of Keller as if she had lost her favorite coat. She felt cold, uneasy, vulnerable. The domestic android, Megex, seemed to notice her discomfort from behind the counter and said, “Would you like a juice bulb?”
“Thank you,” Park said gratefully as the brown-haired android placed it on her tray.
“Fuck,” Megex said in return, very calmly. “Shit, damn, ass, bastard, cock.”
Park stared.
“It’s a Reimi thing,” someone said from behind her then. Park turned and saw her bunkmate Elly Ma standing there, looking pitying. Whether the pity was for Megex or for Park, it wasn’t clear. “Without Reimi around to do maintenance, little bugs are popping up all over the place. This thing won’t stop swearing.”
Park looked again at Megex. “She’s malfunctioning?” She’d never heard of a bug like that before, but she wasn’t familiar with Megex’s model or build. “But a domestic android shouldn’t have a database of swear words to pull from at all. So why would a bug cause her to say them out of nowhere?” To Megex she said, “Query: run a systems check.”
“I am in the middle of an operation,” Megex answered politely, looking down the line of people waiting to be served their food. “Fucker.”
Park laughed, despite herself: it was so bland, so innocent, that it made something like delight bubble up inside of her.
Elly, on the other hand, looked positively disturbed. She was a shy, mousy woman, a member of the group that Park referred to as the “First Name Club”: the handful of women (consisting of her bunkmates and Reimi) who’d insisted on being called by their first names rather than their last, shirking protocol and the usual conventions. The reasons for this were beyond her: she’d hypothesized performative submissiveness or familiarity, or perhaps a signal of sexual availability and enticement, but Keller had called her a “classic overthinker” and left it at that.
But now, without the shield of her more extraverted friend Reimi, Elly looked fretful, uneasy; as if she wished she could hide, perhaps behind the formality of her last name again.
“Maybe it’s another prank someone’s playing,” the climatologist said with concern, glancing again at Megex, who’d ceased cussing for the moment. “Maybe someone is going around and teaching all the bots curse words.” She shook her head. “What a way to blow off steam.”
That sobered Park significantly. She’d had enough of pranks on this ship.
She took her tray and went to her usual table, sitting by herself. Keller was still nowhere to be found—busy working on her “special project,” no doubt—and anyway Park wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Again, the mess hall seemed a little too warm, too humid; her chikin salad, with its precious greens, wilted and shriveled in the heat. Park stared down at it in dismay. Bad for morale, she mused, pushing the limp sprouts around on her plate. Surely they could afford better. Or maybe not—maybe this was what all spaceflight passengers were subjected to. They left details like that out of the colony documentaries she’d watched. She looked around at the low lighting of the ship; at the hot, swampy, white little room. At herself sitting alone in a crowd of people. Yes, it seemed they’d left a lot of things out.
The other crewmembers seemed to be in a foul mood, eating their meals in a tense and simmering silence. Forks scraped restlessly against plates. There was a pressure-cooker atmosphere clamped over the mess hall: something must have happened on that morning’s expedition. Wan Xu had obviously known about it, tried to conceal it from her. But what was it? And did it have anything to do with Keller being reassigned?
Or maybe these others didn’t know, themselves. Park felt the torque of frustration low in her gut. She had the constant feeling that there were things she wasn’t privy to, winging overh
ead. Currents of unspoken knowledge moving through the ship, moving through her. Maybe it was because she wasn’t conscripted, and nearly all of the others were. Or maybe it was because of her position as the ISF’s orbiter—no one was going to confide in their bosses’ “spy.”
But she had to admit that some of the fault also lay with her personality. People found Park spooky, she knew that; they thought she had some uncanny ability to know their thoughts, that she was liable to extract secrets from their minds the way she could separate yolks from cracked eggs. Ridiculous, of course, but she had forced herself to scale back when conversing with them, only listening rather than preempting their responses. People didn’t like it when you could guess their thoughts before they were ready to articulate them.
But by the time she’d recalibrated, the damage had already been done. Along with being a snitch, the crew thought Park was some kind of psychic. A sorceress ready to entangle them in some dark and unknown art. Or maybe even a robot herself; maybe that was why they thought she was in cahoots with Jimex.
Her bleak thoughts were interrupted by a commotion on the other side of the room. Fulbreech and Natalya Severov entered the dining room together, arguing in low voices. Park watched their entrance with veiled interest. She hadn’t spoken to Fulbreech since the catastrophe in the escape shuttle; hadn’t even given herself much time to think on it. His gesture for her had been powerful, of course—even she had to acknowledge that. But she didn’t know what to do with it. What to feel. How to face him and express the proper gratitude—if gratitude was what he even wanted.
Perhaps that was why he turned to Natalya, she thought. She might have greeted the proposal a little more warmly. And they had never come to a meal together before. Park surreptitiously scanned them for any signs of assignation: rumpled hair, slightly unzipped decksuits. No, none of that, but just because their clothing was immaculate didn’t mean they hadn’t coupled. Severov, exacting as she was, was the type to demand intactness, the upkeep of appearances. She was, as Boone often said, a hardass. Park knew a little of what that was like.